How pleasant it is to walk along the alleys of a park or garden, which are snow-covered in winter and give the desired shade in summer! Usually it never occurs to us that in these alleys we might encounter something otherworldly. For example, with ghosts. Meanwhile, there are many gardens and parks where mysterious events take place …
"Red" man and a stranger in a tailcoat
For example, from time to time a phantom of the "Red" man appears in the Parisian Tuileries garden. According to legend, during his lifetime he was a secret agent of Queen Catherine de 'Medici, nicknamed Jean-Flayer. His duties were to destroy the enemies of the queen.
Jean usually watched his victims near the Tuileries. But the day came, and Catherine gave the order to kill Jean himself, since he knew too much about her bloody deeds. Before his death, Jean shouted that he would soon return to the world of the living …
A few days later the "Red" man appeared to the royal astrologer Cosimo Ruggeri in a dream. Soon, Catherine de Medici gave her soul to God. Since then, the ghost of the "Red" man has appeared in the Tuileries Garden on the eve of events dramatic for France. We saw him in other places as well. Thus, Queen Marie Antoinette observed a phantom in her room shortly before the execution. And he appeared to Napoleon on the eve of the fatal battle of Waterloo.
But where the ghost in the Luxembourg Gardens came from is not entirely clear. In 1925, a strange story happened to medical student Jean Romier. He was sitting on a bench in the garden when a stranger in a tailcoat approached him. Having struck up a conversation, the stranger offered to go to visit him on the Rue Vaugirard. The student agreed.
Promotional video:
It was quite fun to visit, only Jean was a little surprised by the old-fashioned atmosphere in the apartment and the outfits of those present, as if from the last century. On the way home, the student remembered that he had left his lighter on the rue Vaugirard.
He returned, but no one opened him, and the neighbors said that no one had lived there for several decades. The young man went to the police. When they broke down the door, it turned out that everything in the apartment was covered with a thick layer of dust. Jean's lighter lay on the fireplace …
Treasure keeper
In Yaroslavl, there is the Peter and Paul Park. This beautiful park with five ponds, connected by irrigation canals, was laid out at the beginning of the 18th century by the owner of a local manufactory, Ivan Zatrapeznov. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks renamed it “The 16th Party Congress Park of Culture and Leisure”.
In the park alleys, you can sometimes see a stranger in old-fashioned black clothes. They say that this is not Zatrapeznov himself, or his manager, whom he instructed to monitor the park. They see him most often at the fourth pond, on the muddy bottom of which, according to legend, silver frames from temple icons were hidden from the Bolsheviks.
Devilry in Saratov
The central city park Lipki is located between Cathedral Square and Radishcheva and Volzhskaya Streets in Saratov. Although visitors are not allowed there at night, there are persistent rumors that from the depths of the dark alleys some ominous sounds and mysterious glow appear. According to legend, the park is inhabited by the phantom of a gardener who once worked here. The man became so attached to the place that even after his death he could not leave it.
There is also a phantom of a young man with a tear-stained face. They say he was killed near the park in the 90s of the XX century - he did not share his girlfriend with an opponent. And now his soul cannot rest in any way.
Another anomalous park is located at the corner of Moskovskaya and Solyanaya streets. It is called the square of the First Teacher. It was destroyed on the site of the Transfiguration Church. The temple and the cemetery were destroyed in the 1930s.
Although the park is quite popular with the townspeople as a place for walking, it has the reputation of a "bad" place. There seems to be a strange fog from time to time. In addition, visitors to the park from time to time feel on themselves someone's gaze, from which there is a frost on the skin.
Unidentified flying objects have repeatedly been observed over the Kumysnaya Polyana forest park in the Saratov region. In addition, there is a whole section of trees, whose trunks have been burned out by lightning. Perfumes are also found in those places. Once a resident of Saratov, Pavel Palaev, photographed the local landscape and captured the silhouette of a ghostly stranger who was not there at the time of shooting.
Prodigal grove
In the Sovetsky district of Bryansk, there is the Nightingale grove, a favorite resting place for the townspeople. It is considered a so-called prodigal place. They say that here it happened to wander even those who know all the paths in the area.
And some, while wandering, come across a large abandoned stone fountain with a bowl filled with rainwater on the way. So what? But the fact is that it is no longer possible to find this fountain for the second time. And this phantom appears as if here and there.
They say that in the 1960s they wanted to expand the park zone in the Nightingales to the very bank of the Desna. And on the descent to the river from the Mound of Immortality, they planned to arrange a complex of several cascading lakes and fountains, which would be connected by a stream. Although all this remained only on the plans, apparently one of the fountains somehow materialized.
Local psychics assure that the special energy of this place is to blame: in ancient times in the "Nightingales" there was a Slavic temple where rituals of worshiping pagan deities were held.
Gardens of Oblivion
In the 19th century, the British authorities were forced to attend to the problem of burials. By that time, it was customary to arrange burials in several tiers in the same place. However, this was dangerous, since in the uppermost tiers the remains were buried at a shallow depth, and the decomposition of bodies could lead to outbreaks of epidemics.
In view of this, it was decided to abandon secondary burials, and lay gardens on top of the old cemeteries. They were immediately dubbed "the gardens of oblivion."
The first such "garden of oblivion" was in 1831 Mont Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Newspaper photographs of the site, taken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, show trees with curved trunks, with what appear to be white glowing spots in the background. According to modern parapsychologists, the zone is geopathogenic, and the reason for this is the placement of the garden in the cemetery.
Revenge of Pavlodar spirits
It is better not to go to the park of culture and rest in the Kazakh city of Pavlodar (popularly called the Gorsad) at night. Locals claim that ghosts are found here: a park with children's attractions was laid out in the 1930s over the old cemetery, and now the phantoms of those who lie in the graves scare living people …
The cemetery appeared here at the beginning of the 19th century and was closed in 1935. The city garden was laid out in this place in 1938. According to the stories of old-timers, when the park was laid out, bones and skulls were removed from the ground. The old graves were mercilessly destroyed, leaving only one thing - a mass grave, in which 27 Bolsheviks were buried, who were shot for trying to establish Soviet power in those places.
There were rumors that the people who worked in the park soon died for various reasons, one after another, and the equipment that was used for the work was out of order. In 1944, a summer cinema was opened in the garden, and in 1945 - a drama theater. However, both buildings burned to the ground during the fires. "Only the spirits of the disturbed dead take revenge!" - said the people of Pavlodar.
Since the beginning of the 40s of the last century, rumors have been circulating about a ghost of a girl in a long white dress, which supposedly flies at night in the city garden among the trees. It usually appears in spring. Frightening the late visitors to the garden, the phantom hovers above the ground and after a few seconds disappears from sight. Eyewitnesses of the event noted that after the disappearance of the ghost, the air temperature in this part of the garden decreases.
In early 2014, the Pavlodar authorities announced that they intend to radically reconstruct the City Garden. It is planned to increase the number of attractions, replace the 25-meter Ferris wheel with a 38-meter one, put up a musical fountain and build an amphitheater with 315 seats. I wonder how the ghosts will react to this?
Dina KUNTSEVA